Ryan Clifford, Cristin Delaney-Guille run to Long Island Marathon wins

Ryan Clifford is more of an ultramarathon runner. A short distance race for him is 31.07 miles, aka 50K. But he took a shorter 26.2-mile marathon spin Sunday for just the second time.

“It’s different because you’ve got to run faster,” Clifford said.

Cristin Delaney-Guille, on the other hand, was running a marathon for the 22nd time.

Clifford, a 27-year-old Seaford native and Westbury resident, has now won every marathon he has ever run, both this year. Delaney-Guille, a 43-year-old Floral Park native and Long Beach resident, has now won two, too.

The top Long Island Marathon competitors were in a pack on Park Blvd. inside Eisenhower Park in East Meadow when the horn went off at 7:30 a.m. They started on a journey that also took them to Uniondale under a gray sky and with the temperature in the high 40s, good running conditions.

When Clifford and Delaney-Guille crossed the finish line back in the park, they had run away with their respective divisions in the 51st edition of this marathon.

Clifford became the men’s champ in his first time running the Long Island Marathon, grabbing the lead about 2 1/2 to three miles in and finishing in a personal-best of 2 hours, 31 minutes, 4.5 seconds. Delaney-Guille also ran her best time at 3:03:09.7 in becoming the women’s champ here for the first time.

“It’s just nice to run a local race and be able to come out and see the whole community, especially now that I live in Westbury,” Clifford said after finishing nearly 15 minutes in front of the runner-up, Sayville’s George Werner Jr. “This is my home running grounds. I run here all the time through Eisenhower and around the industrial park.”

Delaney-Guille had run the Boston Marathon just three weeks ago. She took her Long Island lead at around mile 22 and later said, “This is the best I’ve ever felt during a marathon.”

She crossed the line with her fists raised and a big smile on her face, beating runner-up Natalie Lutz of Delaware by a comfortable margin — more than a minute and a half.

“Oh my God, it’s amazing,” said Delaney-Guille, who works with an after-school program in Merrick. “It’s a dream come true . . . I ran this a bunch of times years and years ago before they changed the course and it was always a favorite of mine.”

She was in the marching band during her Floral Park High days. Delaney-Guille said she “didn’t run a step until I was like 27 years old.” This distance travel has come to suit her.

“It’s therapeutic,” she said. “It’s nice alone time. And I love to grind. I love running fast and long.”

Clifford, who’s going into the escape room business in Westbury, ran distance events for MacArthur and Mansfield University. He has participated in 15 or so ultramarathon races over the last five years. He also took the Icebreaker Marathon at Eisenhower in January.

“It challenges you and it makes you have to work toward something with the training and all that,” Clifford said about distance running. “And then it’s nice to accomplish that when you finish.”

Clifford and Delaney-Guille weren’t the first winners of the day. A half marathon was going on simultaneously.

And two runners won in their first try at a race of this 13.1-mile distance.

Kelly Iocca, a 24-year-old Oakdale resident and a former distance runner at Albany and LIU, can tell everyone about it at Deer Park High where she’s a guidance counselor. Her victorious women’s time was 1:22:04.8.

“It’s just incredible,” Iocca said. “It’s so crazy because I feel like when people talk about racing the half and the full marathon, there’s like so many emotions and just the energy is so great, something I’ve never experienced before. I felt so good.”

Paul Markovina, a 23-year-old engineer and a former Hofstra distance runner, claimed the men’s half. The Old Westbury resident crossed in 1:13:34.4.

“My training has been a little light recently, but it’s been good,” Markovina said. “I’ve been healthy . . . Once I saw [the leader] was falling off a little bit, I put a little surge halfway through and finished it off.”